Federal judge orders a stop on Keystone XL pipeline …..

The judge highlighted numerous missing or faulty legal steps in the Trump admin’s approval of the controversial oil pipeline that will run from Canada thru the northern United States…..

Republican’s are critical of regulation’s and policies that would stop projects from just going ahead and being done regardless….The pipeline has been opposed by local and national environmental groups…

A federal judge ordered both the Trump administration and TransCanada to stop any work on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on Thursday, saying President Donald Trump’s approval of the project last year violated several key environmental and administrative laws by ignoring facts about climate change.

Judge Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court for Montana ruled that the Trump administration almost completely ignored climate change in its analysis supporting the pipeline’s construction, a shift that unlawfully reversed the Obama administration’s 2015 decision rejecting the pipeline’s cross-border permit.

Morris, an Obama appointee, directed the Trump administration in his ruling to prepare a new environmental study before the pipeline can resume construction, leaving the door open to a renewed approval in the future.

“The [State] Department did not merely make a policy shift in its stance on the United States’ role on climate change. It simultaneously ignored” a critical part of the Obama administration’s stance on climate change and foreign relations, Morris concluded. Such a change would require a “reasoned explanation.”